Extreme Temperatures

A major global cooling event that occurred 4,200 years ago may have led to the evolution of new rice varieties and the spread of rice into both northern and southern Asia, an international team of researchers has found.

Their study, published in Nature Plants and led by the NYU Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, uses a multidisciplinary approach to reconstruct the history of rice and trace its migration throughout Asia.

Rice is one of the most important crops worldwide, a staple for more than half of the global population. It was first cultivated 9,000 years ago in the Yangtze Valley in China and later spread across East, Southeast, and South Asia, followed by the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. In the process, rice evolved and adapted to different environments, but little is known about the routes, timing, and environmental forces involved in this spread.

In their study, the researchers reconstructed the historical movement of rice across Asia using whole-genome sequences of more than 1,400 varieties of rice — including varieties of japonica and indica, two main subspecies of Asian rice — coupled with geography, archaeology, and historical climate data.

Sunday saw all-time high temperatures in provinces throughout western Turkey, including in southern Antalya, southwestern Muğla, Burdur and Isparta, and northwestern Bursa.

The director of the 4th Regional Directorate of Meteorology, Latif Gültekin, said the temperatures Saturday and Sunday set all-time record highs for May in Antalya, Muğla, Burdur and Isparta. The previous record highs for Antalya and Muğla were set in 1945 and 1932, respectively, while Burdur and Isparta last set all-time highs on May 29, 2019.

Thermometers in Antalya on Sunday hit 43.0 degrees Celsius (109.4 degrees Fahrenheit), breaking the previous record of 38.7 C set on May 26, 1945.

In Muğla, the temperature hit 39.3 C, breaking the May 30, 1932 record of 36.0 C.

The 4th Regional Directorate of Meteorology said the air temperature in Muğla was 9 to 15 degrees above the seasonal norms, stating that the average temperature for Muğla in May is 24.7 C.

In northwestern Turkey, Bursa also set an all-time high of 38 C on Sunday, breaking the 75-year-old record high of 37 C on May 26, 1945, according to the 3rd Regional Directorate of Meteorology.

Tromsø, a city in northern Norway, is a major cultural hub above the Arctic Circle. It's famed as a viewing point for colorful Northern Lights that sometime light up the nighttime sky. The city's historic center, on the island of Tromsø, is distinguished by its centuries-old wooden houses. The 1965 Arctic Cathedral, with its distinctive peaked roof and soaring stained-glass windows, dominates the skyline.

Thousands of years ago, a group of people trekked across African soil, and their footprints remain to shine a torch on our ancestors' movements and behaviours.

More than 400 indents were left by bare human feet in Engare Sero, Tanzania, originally spotted by members of a local Maasai community more than a decade ago and their age and formation described in 2016.

Geological analyses revealed the prints, all preserved on the same surface of hardened ash from nearby volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai, were made sometime between 6000 and 19,000 years ago, placing them around the Late Pleistocene.

Now, paleoanthropological analyses, published in the journal Scientific Reports, explore what the fossilised tracks reveal about the people who made them.

"Footprints are rare components of the human fossil record," says lead author Kevin Hatala from Chatham University in Pittsburgh, US, "yet they can preserve exceptional snapshots of behaviour in our distant past."

Parts of Scotland woke to May snowfall this morning (Monday, May 11) as a mass of brutal Arctic air rides anomalously-far south on the back of a meridional (wavy) jet stream flow.

Looking at the forecasts, the Highlands can expect even heavier flurries through Tuesday and Wednesday with temperatures dipping below 0C(32F). While southern England will see lows of around 2C (35.6F) overnight Monday, with the windchill making it feel 0C (32F) — protect those young shoots.

Monday's polar blast has arrived with the news that six global organisations, including king warm-mongersthemselves the Met Office, have combined to create a weather model for June through August, 2020 (well they've gotta spend all that funding on something, right, and the world is just screaming-out for MORE MODELS).